marilyn
Thornhedge is a story about Toadling, a fairy who is sent to bestow a gift upon a human child. Things don't quite go as planned, and Toadling spends 200 years watching over a keep that holds a ‘sleeping beauty.' One day, a knight comes along, having read a story about a princess in a tower, and Toadling has to contend with his curiosity.
This novella is a breezy, fun read. While I found myself invested in the characters in a short amount of time and would like to spend more time with them, I am similarly grateful that Kingfisher didn't belabor the story for the sake of it.
I previously read Nettle & Bone by Kingfisher, and was pleased to find a similar balance of sweetness & spookies in Thornhedge (greenteeth are a new one for me). I also enjoyed the way Kingfisher explored the themes of family, beauty, and kindness.
While this is a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty at its base, I would say the association is loose and the story and the themes extend well beyond the original framework. I think anyone interested in a quick, uplifting, enchanting story will enjoy this.
I received a digital review copy of this book via NetGalley.
What I really like about TJ Klune's writing is that it's very outwardly warm. Everything that I have read of his has a sense of kindness and safety, like ‘I know we're doing this difficult thing but we can do this together and it's going to be okay.'
I did feel a little conflicted about this book. The first half was much harder for me to get through than I expected based on my experience with his past books, but it did pick up in the second half.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly where I felt this one fell a little flat. I think there might have been a bit too much dialogue (sometimes it felt like every conversation was a round table that all of the main characters had to weigh in on).
I felt a little frustrated by Rambo. While he was described as a character riddled with anxiety, I felt like he was a contradictory mix of anxious and overzealous.
I would also have liked to have seen a little bit more depth to Victor. As arguably the primary main character, I'm not sure I could actually describe his personality or motivation. Building onto that, the romance piece also missed some depth to me.
Overall, it was a worthwhile read but readers should not expect a similar experience to “The House in the Cerulean Sea” and “Under the Whispering Door” beyond the overall voice and tone.
I received a digital review copy of this book via NetGalley.
Pretty suspenseful and engaging book. I really wasn't expecting all of the cruelty towards kids which made this read kind of weird for me. I'm not a particularly content-sensitive reader so I don't fully understand what about it just caught me a bit wrong. Unlike most readers I didn't find the end to be that surprising, I actually thought it was a little underdeveloped. We find out this information and there is no follow up or consequence. Maybe Hoover was trying to leave it open enough for a sequel?
The first half of this book was amazing, but Sunny's story wasn't compelling enough to carry the second half. The motivator for him at the end unfortunately wasn't developed enough for me to really understand his feelings. If this book was only about Ajay, it would easily be one of the best books I've read.
I liked the premise of the story, and I particularly liked the exploration of the challenges with belonging that mixed-race people experience. The authoritative, present-tense quippy writing didn't always work for me, but I also found Olivia to be extremely petty which didn't help. There were also a few moments that took me out of the story - still thinking about that 3 foot by 2 foot, 3-layer horse-shaped cake. I don't really understand why Bennett likes Olivia at all, but that seems to be a common problem for me with this genre.
Beyond exploring social and racial justice themes, for me the most compelling underlying lesson embedded in Nightcrawling is its encouragement of empathy and acceptance of its characters' circumstances and their decisions — despite them sometimes being the ‘wrong' ones.
Mottley challenges you to navigate impossible choices alongside Kiara. This becomes important to keep the story believable as Kiara experiences trauma that other reviewers feel wasn't conveyed in a way that was not impactful enough... Yet Kiara was taught to disassociate and be the shield for the family. I don't think it's a bad thing to sometimes leave the reader to be an active participant in evaluating her feelings.
The only thing that tripped me up on occasion was the relationship with Camila, her streets mentor. It was hard to understand how often they saw each other and how close they became. And with that, what the timeline was with being involved with the cops and other clients. It was slightly glossed over but not to the detriment of the story.
The prose also deserves to be highlighted, it's beautiful, poetic but not inaccessible. I can't believe this author graduated high school in 2019. What? Amazing.
The Testaments just wasn't great. The plot is half-baked and unconvincing - as were the characters. The timeline is confusing and rushed. If I was asked to describe how I felt about why this book exists it would be that Atwood saw how extensively repetitive and dragging the television series was becoming, and decided it would be a good idea to get out in front of it and have her say as to how things supposedly end for Gilead. Unfortunately, it all just feels noncommittal and dissatisfying (not the good/thought-provoking kind).
There's probably fan fic out there that covers similar content in a better way, which is embarrassing for Atwood.
Unfortunately this book reads as if Bob hadn't heard about LinkedIn yet and needed someplace to record resume and endorsements of his friends. There's limited life behind his stories, and just as soon as you think he's going to get personal, he pivots. Bob is clearly an intensely private person, which makes a memoir a questionable choice. A bummer.
There are a few interesting pieces here and there: primarily his experience with Chris Farley and anticipating his death + never having heard of breaking bad and being very skeptical of it.
Trust starts as a novella within a novel. It's the book everyone of the time has read - a fiction based on the “real” main characters of the actual book. This writing is not page turning, and really the novel doesn't pick up until the halfway mark.
The focus of the novella and thus the novel are a mega-wealthy couple of the era, with the wife having passed away. The novella and the following section (a partial autobiography) introduce the biggest questions... or at least the most interesting. The wife: who really was she and what happened to her?
At the halfway mark with section 3 we hear from the former private secretary of the husband via memoir. This is where it starts to get interesting. A lot of questions are introduced, potential for twists, etc. The final section is a journal.
This is a clever book but I think it missed some potential. There is a lot of build up in the memoir, while the journal is kind of a slow burn that never really has that shocking moment the reader might expect. Frequently I find myself wondering how an author was so creative and clever to have built such an intricate and interwoven story. This wasn't really one of those books but it was still pretty good.
I don't think anything that happened in this book was terribly surprising but it was all entertaining. You don't need to know about tennis, but it's probably even better if you do. I continue to think TJRs books are best in audio format. I liked Carries character arc but also that she didn't undergo an unrealistic personality transformation.
This book was cute.
But:
- almost all physical contact was initiated after something negative happened
- January desperately trying to convince herself that she and Gus are “the same” despite no evidence that they do actually have any feelings in common
- no clear understanding of why they actually like each other beyond some vague assessments of character
- nobody handles communication well in general. At the 75% mark, Naomi comes to town and January has a meltdown for seemingly no reason at all.
- Shadi bails on established plans with January for a guy
- we know nothing about Gus' book until the end which seemed kind of unrealistic and then when we did actually learn about it, it felt like it
- Anya calling her client January “babycakes” at every opportunity
- it was a little too meta
Also, her dad really owned unused lakefront property despite the moms cancer treatment? Ok.
It was okay overall.